Travelling on Punjab roads continues to be a tryst with death. In the absence of adequate steps by Punjab government to apply brakes on the number of road accidents, journeys have ended before the destination for no less than 44 persons during the past two months in the State.
With a person dying on the State roads every 33 hours on an average, the State government has hardly done anything to steer clear from mishaps and disasters on roads, except expressing shock on the demise of innocent lives and announcing compensation.
Already, Punjab has been declared as the State with highest number of deaths in road accidents in the country. Punjab has a fatality rate of 75.8 per cent — highest in India.
The recent report — Road Accidents in India — prepared by the Union Road Ministry’s transport research wing indicated that roads in Punjab are proving to be fatal for commuters, with ludhiana and Amritsar cities claiming the maximum lives in India.
It stated that the severity of accident — that is deaths per 100 mishaps — in the State has increased in the past four years from 65.9 per cent in 2009 to 75.8 per cent in 2012. Taken together, Punjab has lost 4,795 lives in road accidents in 2012 out of 6,328 road accidents.
Although the State government has come up with several suggestions and recommendations, nothing has been implemented on the ground.
The Punjab State Road Safety Council and the Punjab Vidhan Sabha Committee on Accidental Deaths have recommended a slew of measures to check the ever increasing menace on State roads.
Setting up of a Road Safety Database Management System was also proposed to streamline data management of road accidents by digitising the entire data. Unfortunately, everything remained on paper only.
The Council, after inspecting the roads across the State, has identified 370 ‘black spots’ - the accident-prone spots. But, the State government was doing nothing to sort out the problem. In fact, during the budget allocation, no funds have been apportioned for road safety.
Even after four years of its formation, the Council has remained “non-existent” with no funds in its kitty, inadequate infrastructure, and insufficient number experts in the team. Comprising 25 members, the Council has 22 bureaucrats and just one road safety expert as its vice-chairman.
Taking a serious view, Punjab and Haryana High Court Chief Justice Sanjay Kishan Kaul has made it clear to Punjab not to “pack the Council with bureaucrats so that road safety experts are included to utilise their expertise”. He asked the State to have at least 10 members, besides holding periodic meetings, at least twice a month.
“There is hardly any safety for school and college buses. Even as laws are in place, they are flouted with impunity with no respect to human lives. Punjab government has taken some positive steps to reduce road accidents like four-laning of all major State roads connecting major cities, widening and constructing new roads, repairing all roads, etc. But, there is still a long way to go in controlling road accidents,” the Council vice-chairman Kamaljit Soi told The Pioneer.
The Council has suggested rewarding the bus drivers who were not involved in any accident and have not violated any traffic rules, constitution of Cell to check “drunken bus drivers”, disallowing the drivers to carry their mobile phones while driving, among others.
Also, the Punjab School Education Board has been asked to devise a chapter for the students of Class IX to XII, besides requesting all the State’s universities - Panjab University, Chandigarh; Guru Nanak Dev University, Amritsar; and Punjabi University, Patiala-to include chapters on road safety.
The Vidhan Sabha committee in 2011 had recommended cancellation of driving licence after three violations for five years, written tests for getting driving licence, viva voce for illiterates, increasing insurance premium after every accident, suppressing loud, alarming and unusual horns, disallowing functioning of roadside liquor vends on highways and main roads, among others.
While recommendations for fortifying road safety and minimising causalities on roads abound, the Punjab government did little in this direction.
Now, waking a bit too late, the State government is considering a proposal of setting up a unified road safety agency to curb road accident fatalities and injuries.
The proposal, presently under consideration, would be an inter-departmental effort as the road safety is related to more than one department - health, education, transport, public works, among others.